


Eyes like wildflowers

by waywardling



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Human Castiel, Hurt Castiel, Hurt/Comfort, Kissing, M/M, Mechanic Dean Winchester, Minor Character Death, Reunion, Smoking, Smoking Dean Winchester, Summer, Teenage Castiel, Teenage Winchesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-03-18
Packaged: 2017-12-05 17:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/726036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waywardling/pseuds/waywardling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time they meet, Castiel pulls Dean out of a lake. Dean, knowingly or not, takes Castiel's heart in return. The next few years of their adolescence are marked with nothing but wildflowers and beautiful summer days until one night, they turn their friendship into something more. But wildflowers, too, wither when summer starts to fade, and Castiel finds himself abandoned and purposeless the day he turns eighteen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eyes like wildflowers

**Author's Note:**

> Written for DeanCas Week 2013. Beta'd by the lovely [Hayley](http://hey-ass-butt.tumblr.com/).
> 
> There _is_ Castiel/OFC but it's mostly Castiel/Dean and ends with Castiel/Dean. You should keep in mind that the story in its entirety spans over quite a long period of time, probably a little over a decade.
> 
> The plot for this is actually something that's been sitting inside my head for a long time, ever since I listened to that Iron & Wine song, "Flightless Bird, American Mouth." The title is from a song called "Keep Your Head Up" by Ben Howard. Enjoy!

A summer day's illusion, he thinks. A beautiful boy with golden hair emerging from beneath the water, gasping for air, the water surface breaking into a million sparkling pieces – like diamonds. Castiel stills and stares, enraptured by the sight and the warm scent of summer surrounding him. The boy dives back into the lake. He is a mermaid, swift and otherworldly and gleaming under the blanket of water and July sun, and Castiel feels like drowning in the sweetest way possible.

Dazed moments pass before he realizes that the boy hasn’t come up for air in a long time. A few dozen hurried steps forward and he’s at the edge of the wooden dock, heart in his throat and hands starting to get all clammy. His heartbeat is a constant rhythm pumping his blood backwards, up and up through his arteries and all the way up to his brain until it clouds his vision and spins his head. He scans the surface, desperately searching for a glimpse of blonde hair. He thinks of all the things that could go wrong, how Father will be disappointed in him for ruining his Sunday clothes, but the rapid blood flow to his head clouds his judgment and Castiel honestly couldn’t care less about anything that isn’t making sure the boy is safe. Discarding his jacket and slacks behind him and stumbling out of his shoes, he jumps into the water headlong.

Everything is murky underwater. But a few searching glances downward and there he is, his golden prince, struggling like a fish out of water though he is underwater. He swims closer and sees that the boy’s ankles are caught in a tangle of seaweed. A wild stream of bubbles and a series of desperate tugs from the boy are enough to have Castiel swim towards him and rip away at the slimy hands that are curling around the boy’s ankles. He rips and pulls and untangles the knots, not caring that he’s slowly running out of breath. The boy finally pulls free from the grip with one last struggle.

They swim up towards the real world as fast as they can with whatever energy they have left. When the boy starts to go lax and his eyes fall hooded, Castiel fits him under his free arm and continues upward. It’s a difficult process with the increasing lack of oxygen in his system straining his chest and all, but when he reaches the surface, breathes in fresh air until his lungs hurt and eyes the boy’s face up close for the very first time, all of it is worth it.

He pulls the both of them out of the lake and safely back on the dock. To his dismay the boy is still motionless and quiet, and so Castiel shakes him and shakes him and calls for help and shakes him and wipes wet strands of hair off his still, beautiful face but nothing happens – until something does. With a sudden gush of energy the boy shoots up, gasps for life, breathes in life, and regains life. He has wild green eyes. He has the entire North American continent mapped across his face in freckles. He, knowingly or not, from then on has Castiel’s heart beating in his hands, blood still warm and dripping and all.

  
“Thank you,” he says. Castiel just blankly stares at the boy’s outstretched hand.

“Hey,” the boy nudges him and Castiel looks up, “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Castiel says after a beat and grasps onto the offered hands for dear life. _No problem at all._

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Dean,” the boy tells him later, “Dean Winchester.”

Dean Winchester has beautiful green eyes, a brother named Sam, and a give ‘em hell attitude. He’s a self-proclaimed street rat who likes climbing trees and hollering at the pretty girls from the rich part of town, and Castiel has long since fallen for him. Dean tells him straight up from the beginning that he doesn’t mind that Castiel’s the odd, quiet type and after a few weeks of playing Tom and Huck together, he’s told that he might even like him almost as much as he likes Sam. Castiel spends the rest of the day grinning until his face starts to hurt.

A few years pass and they are less small, more built, and much taller now, looking like adults though still young at heart. Castiel rarely goes home anymore. His father no longer calls him by name and doesn’t smile anymore but that’s all right – at least that’s what Castiel tells himself. The fact is that the small, rundown space that the Winchesters call home is more of a home for him now than the cage of a polished mansion he grew up in.

Summer returns. It’s a day before his eighteenth birthday. He’s going to college in the fall. Dean is not. They argue about the fact that night, Dean sitting on the bed with his lips around a cigarette and all, and Castiel tries so hard to convince, to prove and reassure, and to show the stubborn bastard in front of him that _yes_ , he is capable, _yes_ , he is worthy, and _yes_ , it’s okay to do something for _himself_ for once. Dean exhales one last blow of smoke and drops the cigarette butt on the floor to step on it, looks up at Castiel with wide, forest eyes he fell for in the first place. In a whirl of movement, Dean is standing and coming closer, and soon he’s so close that all Castiel sees are freckles and gold flecks on green. As soon as their foreheads touch, Castiel dives straight in for the kiss. The apartment disappears in swirls around them as they grab onto each other, shoulders first, then backs of heads and necks and handfuls of cotton, a tug of war of lips and gasps and sounds and smell. Dean smells like beer and smoke and leather, and it’s just the same as falling deeper and deeper into the water but Castiel doesn’t stop because he can’t stop. It goes on for what feels like forever, but then the need for air causes them to pull away. There is a constant beat of drums still ringing inside his ribcage as Castiel catches his breath. He tries to see if Dean has drums inside him too, feeling for the pulse by moving fingertips across the chest in front of him. Dean lets out a laugh and Castiel feels the vibrations through his palm. He wants to push Dean back until they’re both pressed up against the wall and find out what other sounds Dean can make.

“Dad will be back soon,” he hears instead. He looks up and sees warmth in Dean’s eyes, in the curve of his mouth, and it temporarily clears the cloud of lust around him.

“And?”

Dean chuckles, “And you should get home, little rebel.”

He wants to protest, but John Winchester is not the most understanding man on the planet and Cas doesn’t want to cause Dean any trouble.

“All right,” he sighs.

“Hey, no need to act grumpy.” Dean is still grinning and Castiel finds it hard not to grin along.

“So…tomorrow?” Dean asks tentatively.

“Yes,” he agrees. “Tomorrow.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

Tomorrow finds Castiel calling out Dean’s name and hearing nothing in reply. He’s been standing in front of the Winchesters’ apartment door for the past hour and his insides are twisting and turning against his will. _It’s nothing_ , he chastises himself. Sam and Dean are probably out getting groceries, but the explanation doesn’t sit well in his stomach. It’s Castiel’s birthday. Dean had supposedly planned a celebration for him. Castiel is right on time and Dean is a man of his words – so where is he? He pounds on the door for the hundredth-something time and yells for Dean again. He begins to think terrible thoughts, worst case scenarios, how someone might be on the floor on the opposite side of the door, not breathing and turning cold. So when the clock strikes noon, he gets the manager to unlock the door. Inside, everything is clean. The Winchesters are notoriously unorganized people – the messiest he’s ever met – yet the apartment is clean. _Cleaned out_ , he corrects himself. There is nothing left except for the furniture. He looks outside the window to the back. The Chevy’s gone as well.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he breathes.

Something is so wrong with this picture that he wants to rip it apart and throw it in the fireplace.

Ten minutes of running like there’s no tomorrow and he’s in front of the Harvelles’ Roadhouse, chest heaving like it’s going to burst, sweat dripping from his forehead. Ellen is the only one present, save for a couple of local men sitting in the dark corners.

“Where are the Winchesters?”

“Castiel,” she starts but he doesn’t listen, just leans in closer and asks again.

“ _Where are they?_ ”

“They left,” she tells him. “Early in the morning, before sunrise. Don’t know where.”

“What do you mean you don’t know where? They must have told you.”

“No.”

“Something, anything, a note, a number…”

“They’re _gone_ , Castiel.”

The thing that has been twisting around in his stomach finally succeeds in crawling up his throat and blocking his airway.

“All Dean told me was that they were skipping town. I tried to dig for more information but he wouldn’t listen to me – and _believe_ me when I say that he didn’t listen – and he was gone soon after. Sam was in the backseat with their stuff. They’re gone.”

He still searches the entire town for them. He returns to the apartment when the sun goes down and sits in front of the now empty, locked room. Dean has fled, he realizes. He has fled with his heart. It’s been in the boy’s hands from the very moment they met at the lake many years ago, Castiel knows this – but he still feels emptier than before. _I give you everything and you leave me? I have no heart because of you, and you leave me?_

He lets his face crumble, puts his fists in his hair and bows his head. He tries to put all the blame on Dean but fails miserably. It’s irrational and he knows it, he knows that there must have been another reason for the sudden departure, but he can’t help thinking that it was all his fault – for knowing Dean, for loving Dean, for kissing Dean, for _wanting_ Dean.

The empty hall mocks him, the wood digging into his back mocks him, and the smell of cigarette smoke from somewhere down the stairs mocks him too. Castiel, with a sense of despair, realizes that he will never be able to smoke a single cigarette– or smell one for that matter – without being reminded of this day.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

She has mahogany hair and wild green eyes so he falls in love with her. She’s a sweet girl from Indianapolis by the name of Amber Davis, and she looks like an angel as she walks down the aisle in her white wedding dress to walk up to him and hold his hands. They get a nice little house in a nice little beach town in Southern California because Amber loves the sun and the shore. They’re young, still in their twenties, and, most importantly, _happy_. Castiel feels genuine joy for the first time in many years, and it makes him forget.

In reality he should have never forgotten. His momentary happiness is ripped away from him when Amber falls sick a year after their wedding. It takes the doctors months to come up with a diagnosis, but in the end it’s lung cancer. Stage four. No hope. Better if she stays at home until what will inevitably happen happens. Castiel throws up in the hospital bathroom until there’s nothing left in his stomach but grief.

Amber still smiles at him whenever he looks at her, but the shine of it is no longer Christmas lights, but rather a flickering candlelight that makes Castiel want to build a rock fortress around her so that no wind will blow her away. They spend months and months trying to delay the inevitable. Castiel used to have hope in the beginning that she would somehow miraculously recover from the illness, but the more the green of her eyes and the pink of her skin fade, the more of his hope gets torn to pieces and eaten up by the darkness that has settled in the house.

One exceptionally warm October afternoon finds Castiel staring at a familiar face. The man is wearing a worn leather jacket that he remembers the smell of. The man is leaning against the side of a black muscle car that he still remembers the smooth touch of. The man is staring at him with wild green eyes that Castiel would recognize from anywhere.

“Dean?”

“Hey Cas,” says Dean Winchester, now standing right in front of him. “It’s been a while.”

Castiel proceeds to punch him across the face in return. He is too unsettled and furious to care that Dean is holding the side of his face that just got socked and looking at him with incredulous, wide eyes.

“Cas, what…”

“What the _fuck_ are you doing here?”

“Cas, I…”

“How did you find me? Why… _how_ are you here?”

Dean tries to reach out and grab his arm but Castiel is faster, grabbing Dean by the collar, pulling him up towards him. Dean’s hands scrabble for purchase for a moment, but then move forward to gently cup the sides of Castiel’s face. He hisses at the initial contact but melts against his own will eventually, blaming green eyes and warm, calloused hands all the while.

“I’m sorry,” Dean whispers, “I’m so sorry.”

That’s all it takes to break Castiel all over again. The tension in his body bleeds out, and Dean Winchester soon finds himself standing with two feet solid on the asphalt of the road again.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Is that him?” Amber asks quietly from where she’s lying in her bed.

Castiel nods. He’s expects her to say something more, something that will convince him to kick Dean out of the house instead of letting him sit and wait in the kitchen with an ice pack held to his face, but that something never comes.

“You guys should talk,” she says instead. “I’ll leave you two alone. You can close the door on your way out.”

He looks to her and she gives him her prettiest smile. Talk it is, then.

Dean just stares at Castiel when he walks into the kitchen and Castiel does the same. Dean has definitely changed since the last time they saw each other. The line of his face is more angular now, his complexion tanner, and his hair much darker than before. The pretty eyes and plump lips haven’t changed one bit, but it’s easy to see that the past ten years haven’t been easy on the Winchester either, as there are scars marking certain corners of his face and neck, and dark bags hang under his eyes.

“What happened to you?”

“I would say _life_ , but that would be a little too cliché, wouldn’t it?”

“Stop being a smartass and answer me,” Castiel sighs and moves to sit across from Dean. “What happened that night?”

Dean falls silent and ponders the question for a while before opening his mouth again.

“Dad, he… he got into trouble. He ran into the wrong folk and there was a fight and,” Dean swallows around a lump in his throat, “Sammy was in danger, and as soon as I found them I had to get us out of there.”

“You could have told me.”

“I know, I wanted to, but there was just not enough time, man. I couldn’t think straight.”

“You could have left me a note, a clue, something, _anything_. You left behind _nothing_ and I was so lost, I couldn’t…”

“I know.”

“I couldn’t _find_ you. I couldn’t understand. I thought maybe it was because of what happened between us that night, because of what I did…”

“ _No_ , Cas,” Dean inhales before continuing. “No. It was nothing like that. Had nothing to do with that.”

Castiel looks back to Dean, and something must have shown on his face because Dean reaches his arms out to hold his hands in his own. Castiel wants to shove him away but finds that he can’t, now that the rage and confusion that he has been building up inside all these years have dissolved away.

“So what’s up with your…”

“Wife.”

“Right,” Dean fidgets. “Yeah. Wife. What’s wrong with your wife?”

“Lung cancer. Final stage.”

“Damn,” Dean looks mournful and genuinely sorry, and Castiel thinks about how ironic it is that Amber, who has never touched a cigarette in her entire life, gets terminal lung cancer while Dean Marlboro Winchester doesn’t.

Turns out Sam is a Stanford Law student now, and Dean was on his way to visit him when he found out that Castiel and his wife lived in California as well. Dean decides to stick around for a little while. Castiel helps him reserve a decent motel room.

Castiel is sitting by Amber’s side the next day, reading her a section of her favorite Vonnegut book while she dozes in and out of sleep, and out of the blue she whispers something he really didn’t want to hear from her.

“I don’t mind… if you love again… after I’m gone…”

“Amber, don’t be silly, I can’t possibly.”

“You used to have… a strong bond with him… sweetheart,” she smiles sadly. “I can still… see it in you two… right now. It’s nothing to… be ashamed of. It’s good for you. He’s good for you.”

He struggles to keep his game face on for his sick, dying love, but fails in the end. The mask drops and shatters on the floor, skirting across the surface in pieces.

Four days after his encounter with Dean Winchester finds Castiel trying to hold back an ocean of tears as he watches the last vestige of his wife slip and fade away. The home physician and nurse are kind enough to give him plenty of time to mourn. Dean is waiting in front of the house when Castiel comes outside to silently make his way to his car and drive to the funeral home. Dean doesn’t say a word, just softly touches his shoulder, and Castiel accepts it, taking comfort from the warmth that bleeds in through the touch.

Recovery doesn’t happen fast. Castiel never expected it to. The funeral is private and quaint. He doesn’t invite Dean, and Dean never shows up. He eventually decides to sell the house. There’s no use in keeping the big house when he’s the only one living in it, he tells himself and everybody else, but the real reason is that he can’t stand being surrounded by all the memories.

But recovery does come, in due time. Castiel moves to South Dakota and rents an apartment in Sioux Falls, near Singer Salvage Yard where Dean works as a mechanic. There is still a distance between Dean and him, it’s expected and Castiel knows this, but in the end he decides that it doesn’t really matter. They are still friends, reunited childhood friends for that matter, and that’s all Castiel cares about at the moment. They see each other almost every day and he’s already learning to smile at Dean again, which Castiel thinks could mean something. He relearns the curve of Dean’s shoulders, relearns the sound of his humming, the touch of his golden brown hair and the dip of his dimples. It takes time, but a lot of the things he used to love about the green-eyed boy do come back to Castiel.

Castiel relearns the shape of Dean Winchester’s lips on a starry mid-August night a year and a half later, on the hood of Dean’s Impala. He thinks back to the day he first met Dean, how he couldn’t believe his eyes, how he had pulled Dean out of the lake. He imagines himself back at that old apartment the Winchesters used to live crammed up in, his hands on Dean and Dean’s hands on him, the smell of cigarettes, beer, and old cotton floating in the air. Castiel feels his heart start to thump loudly. It’s a strange sensation, something that makes him feel as if he’s meeting a part of his body for the first time.

“Cas, can I tell you something?”

“Yes, Dean.”

“Promise not to laugh at me?”

Castiel chuckles, feeling affection spread through his chest like wildflowers spreading roots. “I won’t laugh at you. Tell me.”

“You, um,” Dean drops his gaze to their intertwined hands. “Pretty much had my heart from the day you saved me from the water.”

Castiel realizes that he was wrong all along. He had been so caught up in that summer day’s illusion of wonderment and loss that he didn’t even notice it when Dean unlocked his chest, took out his own heart and put it in Castiel’s chest instead.

“Happy Birthday, Cas,” says Dean Winchester with a smile that’s as bright as the green of his eyes.

Castiel spends the rest of the night grinning and doesn’t care when his face starts to hurt.

**Author's Note:**

> Tell me what you think! Suggestions, questions, and constructive criticism are all much appreciated.


End file.
